Digital graphic design, image editing, audio editing, and video editing applications (i.e., media-editing applications) provide graphical designers, media artists, movie and television directors, and other users with the necessary tools to create a variety of media content. Examples of such applications include Final Cut Pro® and iMovie®, both sold by Apple, Inc. These applications give users the ability to edit, combine, transition, overlay, and piece together different media content in a variety of manners to create a resulting media project. The resulting media project specifies a particular sequenced composition of any number of text, audio, image, and/or video content elements that is used to create a media presentation.
Various media editing applications facilitate such composition through electronic means. Specifically, a computer or other electronic device with a processor and computer readable storage medium executes the media editing application. In so doing, the computer generates a graphical interface whereby designers digitally manipulate graphical representations of the media content to produce a desired result.
Video today comes in many formats, such as different standard definition formats (e.g., NTSC and PAL), different high definition formats (e.g., 720p and 1080p), as well as even higher resolution formats (e.g., 4K). In many cases, filmmakers will want to use video of different formats in the same media project, such as when combining recently-filmed footage with older footage in a documentary. In addition, filmmakers may want to create a project in different output formats for different mediums (e.g., theater, DVD, streaming video, etc.). However, many previous media-editing applications do not handle these conversions between different media formats very well.